Grooming gang victims who feel failed by local investigations welcome national inquiry

In 2019, nine men were jailed for raping and abusing two teenage girls living in a children's home in Bradford.

One of the victims, Fiona Goddard, says more than 50 men raped her. When the government began to talk about offering councils money for local inquiries, Fiona hoped Bradford would be one of the first to take up the offer.

But there didn't seem to be much enthusiasm. The council was quick to point out that there had already been an independent case review into Fiona's case, along with four other victims.

This, then, was Fiona's first reasoning for wanting a national inquiry: The council felt it had done all that needed to be done. Fiona didn't.

The Independent review, published in July 2021, found that while in the children's home, Fiona "went missing almost on a daily basis". The police attitude was that she could look after herself - she was "street-wise".

There was "agreement by all agencies that Fiona was either at risk of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) or actively being sexually abused and exploited". But "this was not addressed by any single agency".

And "when Fiona became pregnant at the age of 15, there was little curiosity or enquiry who the father was". So, obvious failings were discovered.

The predictable response was that lessons had been learned and new processes put in place. But no one seemed to be held accountable.

Grooming gangs timeline: What happened, what inquiries there were and how Starmer was involved Ms Goddard told Sky News: "In my serious case review she [Jane Booth, the independent chair] found seven incidences at least, in them records that she found, of them not reporting sexual abuse or rape or assault, from as young as eight years old, and one of the incidences I literally turned up covered in blood and they didn't report it. "That is not just misunderstanding a crime, that is making intentional decisions not to report the sexual abuse of a child." She adds: "Let's not forget, these people still work within social services and the police force." Not only did this Independent review not satisfy Fiona, but it also didn't begin to reflect the levels and scale of abuse Fiona had experienced outside of Bradford.

Asked where she was trafficked to, Fiona rattles off a list of cities. "Blackburn, Rotherham, Rochdale, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Oldham - never Telford, I'd never even heard of Telford until it all came out if I'm honest - Nottingham, Oxford." Then she remembers she didn't go to Oxford - men from Oxford came to her - but the point is made.

Local enquiries can't possibly begin to explore the networks of men who traffic women, often down routes of drug trafficking being done by the same gangs. Bradford Council told Sky News it contributed to the national Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) and published more than 70 reports where child sexual exploitation was discussed and has implemented findings from the independent local review which included Fiona's case.

Fiona believes there are numerous connections leading back to Bradford - but victims from each city often believe their abusers are at the centre of it. We've spoken to grooming victims across the country, and in 2022, a case was reopened in Humberside after a Sky News investigation, where we found diary entries, texts, photos, and school reports all indicating that teenage victims had been abused.

Read more on this story:Telford child abuse victims speak outWhat we know about grooming gangs, from the dataThe women who blew whistle on Rotherham One of them was "Anna.